After the 85 mile hilly bike ride followed by an hour run, on schedule today was the long run for the week – 2.5 hours.
I expected to be very sore and uncomfortable on the run, but surprisingly, I felt strong, without much soreness. I was still tired from yesterday’s training so keeping my HR down in zone 2 was tough. I settled into a 13:40 pace and my HR floated between high zone 2 and low zone 3. I could have slowed my pace down, but feeling as good as I did on the run, I decided to stay at the 13:40 pace. At a 13:45 pace, I am looking at 6 hours to complete the marathon distance portion of IMNZ, a time that I am very comfortable with. The route I took also had about 800′ feet of elevation gain, so my HR would have been lower if I ran a flatter route.
